AMD Phenom II 810, 805, 720 & 710 AM3 CPUs

Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2 is the latest first person shooter from Ubisoft, and while it continues the Far Cry franchise that Crytek started in 2004, this game is built on its own in-house engine and has no association - other than its name - to anything Crytek has worked on or is working on now. We used a retail version of the game and the in-built gameplay demo set to High-Very High settings under DirectX 10.

Far Cry 2

1680x1050 0AA 0AF, Very High Settings

Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (4x3.2GHz, 1,600MHz FSB, DDR3)

Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (4x3.2GHz, 1,600MHz FSB, DDR2)

Core 2 Quad Q9650 (4x3.0GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR3)

Core 2 Quad Q9550 (4x2.83GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR3)

Core 2 Quad Q9450 (4x2.66GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR3)

Core 2 Duo E8500 (2x3.16GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR3)

AMD Phenom II X4 810 (4x2.6GHz, 2.0GHz HTT, DDR3)

AMD Phenom II X4 (4x2.6GHz, 2.0GHz HTT)

AMD Phenom II X4 805 (4x2.5GHz, 2.0GHz HTT, DDR3)

AMD Phenom II X4 940 (4x3.0GHz, 1.8GHz HTT)

Core 2 Quad Q9650 (4x3.0GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR2)

AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE (3x2.8GHz, 2.0GHz HTT, DDR3)

AMD Phenom II X4 920 (4x2.8GHz, 1.8GHz HTT)

AMD Phenom II X4 810 (4x2.6GHz, 2.0GHz HTT, DDR2)

AMD Phenom II X4 805 (4x2.5GHz, 2.0GHz HTT, DDR2)

Core 2 Duo E8500 (2x3.16GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR2)

Core 2 Quad Q9550 (4x2.83GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR2)

Core 2 Quad Q9450 (4x2.66GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR2)

AMD Phenom II X3 710 (3x2.6GHz, 2.0GHz HTT, DDR3)

Core 2 Quad Q6700 (4x2.66GHz, 1,066MHz FSB, DDR2)

Core 2 Quad Q6700 (4x2.66GHz, 1,066MHz FSB, DDR3)

AMD Phenom X4 9950 BE (4x2.6GHz, 2.0GHz HTT)

AMD Phenom X4 9850 BE (4x2.5GHz, 2.0GHz HTT)

AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE (3x2.8GHz, 2.0GHz HTT, DDR2)

AMD Phenom II X3 710 (3x2.6GHz, 2.0GHz HTT, DDR2)

Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, 6.4GHz QPI, SMT enabled)

Core i7 940 (4x2.93GHz, 4.8GHz QPI, SMT enabled)

Core i7 920 (4x2.66GHz, 4.8GHz QPI, SMT enabled)

AMD Athlon X2 7750 BE (2x2.7GHz, 1.8GHz HTT)

AMD Phenom X3 8750 BE (3x2.4GHz, 1.8GHz HTT)

66.5

66.3

65.3

65.2

64.5

64.2

63.2

63.1

63.1

62.5

62.4

61.8

61.3

60.9

60.8

60.4

60.1

59.4

59.4

59.3

58.4

58.1

58.0

57.7

55.8

55.4

52.5

52.4

47.7

47.4

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Frames Per Second - higher is better

FPS

The Phenom II X3 720 with DDR3 performs admirably in Far Cry 2 with performance knocking on the door of the Core 2 Quad Q9650! Even the Phenom II X4 810 and 805 are getting in on the action too. The E8500 with its fast core clock and DDR3 still edge out ahead, but with DDR2 the 810 and 805 are marginally faster.

The new X3s are a little dissapointing, despite the fast core clocks it seems that Far Cry 2 really does benefit from more cores, as well as memory bandwidth and high clock speed more than other games.